Nation, State, and Cross-Strait Relations: Perspectives from Taiwan

Transcription

1 Macalester International Volume 18 Chinese Worlds: Multiple Temporalities and Transformations Article 10 Spring 2007 Nation, State, and Cross-Strait Relations: Perspectives from Taiwan Horng-luen Wang Academia Sinica Follow this and additional works at: Recommended Citation Wang, Horng-luen (2007) "Nation, State, and Cross-Strait Relations: Perspectives from Taiwan," Macalester International: Vol. 18, Article 10. Available at: This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Global Citizenship at College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Macalester International by an authorized administrator of College. For more information, please contact

2 Nation, State, and Cross-Strait Relations: Perspectives from Taiwan 1 Horng-luen Wang I. Introduction: An Overview of the National Question in Taiwan The problems surrounding the theoretical understanding of nation and state in Taiwan are among the most intriguing and most confusing in the contemporary world. Some might know that there is a so-called separatist or independence movement, often referred to as Taiwanese nationalism, that intends to turn Taiwan into a nation; some others might also know that there have been tensions between Taiwan and China that could lead to devastating military conflicts, as made manifest in the two missile crises in 1996 and I use national question as a general term to refer to those issues pertaining to Taiwan s nation/nationalism, state, and cross-strait relations. Although Taiwan s national question has been attracting more and more attention from both within and outside Taiwan during the past decade, the growing awareness of this problem has unfortunately been beset with misconceptions and misunderstandings. The aim of this essay is to clarify these issues by providing an alternative perspective through which to analyze Taiwan s national question. Such an analysis, it is hoped, may help bring new perspectives to break the current impasse. I shall first point out and dispute the bias and insufficiencies of a number of popular images or common sense notions about Taiwan s national question. Next, I shall advance an institutional approach with a global perspective to view the problem. I argue that Taiwan s national 45

3 Macalester International Vol. 18 question is in essence an international problem embodied in institutional settings of the Republic of China (ROC) nation. The recent escalation of nationalist politics is the result of the growing institutional crises of the ROC nation, exacerbated by ethnic tensions within Taiwan and confounded by cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China. Consequently, the reduction of tensions and the avoidance of potential conflict between Taiwan and China can only come about through the efforts of people and states on both sides of the Taiwan Strait (i.e., a bottom-up solution) as well as an involvement of the international community. II. Some Common Misunderstandings and Misconceptions A. Regarding Taiwan s National Question Two popular views dominate the current understanding of Taiwan s national question within the general public, both within and outside the island. The first is an ethnic explanation; the other is what can be called the divided nation model. In spite of their popularity, both views are neither sufficient for the purposes of explaining Taiwanese nationalism, nor do they provide a comprehensive understanding of Taiwan s national question. As a matter of fact, the insufficiencies that emanate from these misunderstandings are partly accountable for what is at stake in the dispute surrounding Taiwan s national question. 1. The Ethnic Explanation Ethnic tensions and conflicts between two dichotomous groups (the so-called Mainlanders and the Taiwanese ) are the most popular and convenient way of viewing Taiwan s national question. It is often held that the Mainlanders (those who fled from mainland China to Taiwan with the exiled KMT regime in 1949, and their offspring) tend to favor a Chinese identity and opt for future reunification with China. On the other hand, the Taiwanese (mainly Holo- but sometimes including the Hakka-speaking people who had settled on the island for several generations before the wave of immigrants who arrived with the KMT) tend towards a Taiwanese identity and thus favor Taiwan Independence (TI). Accordingly, the political camps can be divided roughly into two: the Blue (favoring unification) vs. the Green (favoring independence). 46

4 Horng-luen Wang The ethnic explanation is insufficient at best and misleading at worst in that the so-called ethnic conflicts between Mainlanders and Taiwanese are themselves part of the result rather than the cause of Taiwan s national question. Imagine the following scenario: had Taiwan not been ceded to and colonized by Japan in 1895, and had Taiwan not been occupied by the exile KMT (Kuomintang, literally national party ) regime from mainland China in 1949, then it would have been highly probable that there would not be any distinction at all between Mainlanders and Taiwanese. Put another way, the dichotomy between the two ethnic groups is itself the product of Taiwan s national question, in which Taiwan s belonging to the state (be it the Qing Dynasty of imperial China, Japan, or the KMT) has been a shifting dispute. 2 The ethnic explanation is impeded by the difficulty of characterizing Taiwanese nationalism, which runs against conventional wisdom about nations and nationalism and thus cannot be easily categorized. One of the most fatal and misleading characterizations of Taiwanese nationalism is to view it as a separatist movement that is comparable to, for example, Quebec vs. Canada or Catalonia vs. Spain. Quebec and Catalonia are separatist movements in that those national struggles seek separation from the states whose jurisdiction they are under. This, however, is not applicable to Taiwan. Contemporary Taiwan does not share the same political roof with China as Quebec does with Canada or Catalonia does with Spain. Hence the case for Taiwan Independence sounds rather confusing to many outsiders. The oft-asked question is: Independence from whom? If Taiwanese nationalism is understood as the struggle of the Taiwanese (the oppressed majority) against the Mainlanders (the ruling minority) during the KMT era, then why did nationalist politics in Taiwan escalate rather than decline after the year 2000, when ethnic Taiwanese became the ruling majority and the pro- Independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) replaced the KMT. I am not suggesting that ethnic factors are irrelevant or unimportant in explaining Taiwan s national question. However, to view the problem of Taiwan s national question as originating from conflicts between these two ethnic groups is quite misleading. Ethnic problems and the national question are correlated, but they are not the same, nor can they be conflated with each other. 47

5 Macalester International Vol The Divided-Nation Model The other popular misconception concerning Taiwan s national question is to view Taiwan as a part of the divided Chinese nation, the other part being mainland China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the national title People s Republic of China. This view, held particularly in the early years, is still popular in scholarly discussions and is widely held by a majority of the Taiwanese population even today (although, as will be shown below, the popularity of such a view has receded considerably in recent years). Using the Divided Nation model to explain Taiwan s national question can be said to be only half-true, but the other half of that equation may help to illuminate the real nature of Taiwan s national question that necessitates further analysis. Just like former Vietnam, pre-1990 Germany, and contemporary Korea, China and Taiwan viewed together were a divided nation, resulting from the Cold War structure after the Second World War. In this sense, Taiwan s national question, from its inception, was indeed an international problem, as the prolonged division between China and Taiwan was a Cold War strategy. However, if we try to understand Taiwan s national question from this divided nation model, it will become quite misleading but by debunking such a misunderstanding, we can get closer to what is at stake in Taiwan s national question. Let me elaborate this in two points. Firstly, although the division between Taiwan and China resembles other divided nations after WWII, such a fact is neither well known nor officially recognized. People know that Vietnam was once divided into North and South, and the division ended after a protracted war. It is also widely known that there used to be two Germanys, which became reunified in a dramatic fashion in As for Korea, it has thus far remained divided into North and South, and such a fact has also been widely acknowledged around the world. The case of China and Taiwan, however, is rather different. Most states in the world endorse the so-called One China policy, which maintains that there is only one China in the world and that Taiwan is part of China. China, after all, is not considered a divided nation. Moreover, although Taiwan was once characterized as Free China before the 1970s, few people nowadays know that Taiwan bears the national title of Republic of China (ROC). Far fewer know that Taiwan/ROC is not recognized as a sovereign state. Quite the opposite, most people assume it is, because 48

6 Horng-luen Wang it has its own government and army, exercises full democracy, and citizens elect their own president through a direct voting system. Such a discrepancy has planted tragic seeds for Taiwanese nationalism. I shall get to this in a later section. The second reason why the divided nation model does not fit Taiwan involves the democratic transformation of Taiwanese politics in the past few decades. Since the KMT took refuge in Taiwan in 1949, it has endeavored to maintain a Chinese identity and Chinese nationalism. Since 1988, when Lee Teng-hui succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo to become the first native-born president, the situation began to change. Lee Teng-hui swung between Chinese and Taiwanese identities from time to time. Indeed, the momentum of nation building shifted from a Chinese nationalism (for unification) to a Taiwanese nationalism (for independence) during Lee s 12-year presidential term. The shift reached its peak in 2000 when Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election and the pro-independence DPP became the ruling party. Since the DPP, established in 1987 and constituted in the main by Taiwanese rather than Mainlanders, does not bear the memory of the Chinese civil war as the KMT does, the legacy of the civil war is denied. For pro-independence nationalists, the divided nation model certainly does not apply to Taiwan, since they never consider Taiwan and China a divided nation that should be reunified. Quite the opposite! In their view, Taiwan and China are two different nations instead of a nation divided in two. III. An Alternative Perspective and the Analytical Framework If the ethnic explanation and the divided nation model cannot satisfactorily explain Taiwan s national question, and if Taiwanese nationalism cannot be perceived as a separatist movement as it usually is, how else can it be understood? I argue that the question must be viewed globally, from an institutionalist approach, in which two factors are emphasized: the one institutional, the other global or international. The institutionalist approach to nations and nationalism is first theorized by sociologist Rogers Brubaker in his path-breaking Nationalism Reframed. Drawing on the insights from institutionalism and new institutionalism in various disciplines, Brubaker proposed that nation and nationhood can be better understood, not as substance but as institutionalized form, not as collectivity but as practical category, and not as entity but as contingent event. 3 In his original formulation, Brubaker 49

7 Macalester International Vol. 18 distinguishes between two aspects of institutionalization of nationhood and nationality: one concerning the territorial organization of political administration, the other concerning the classification of persons. 4 To take it a step further, I propose that such a distinction of institutions corresponds roughly to two ideal types of the nation-state: the civic-territorial model and the ethno-cultural model. 5 While such a distinction might seem banal today, it nonetheless has important implications for our understanding of the institutions of the nation. The civic-territorial model essentially concerns the political organization of the nation regarding sovereignty, territoriality, and citizenship. The ethno-cultural model involves (re)presentation of the nation in the symbolic realm, including national culture, national history, the classification scheme of people, and the like. To be sure, no nation has in reality been founded solely on either of the two models. For those nations built on the ethno-cultural model, there are still institutions that define these nations in civic-territorial terms. Conversely, nations based on the civic-territorial model contain ethno-cultural elements in defining their nationhood. The weaving of these two types of institutions actualizes the existence of a specific nation. These two types of institutions, in turn, furnish the grids of the classification schemes on the political/territorial and the cultural/cognitive maps, respectively, on the worldwide level. They are highly correlated to each other, but neither can be reduced to the logic of the other. Moreover, according to the property of relativity that we learn from the theory of new institutionalism, whether a social pattern or practice can be seen as an institution depends on the context of our analysis. 6 In the context of nationhood and nationality, the property of relativity brings us to what is known as the institutionalist theory of world polity, developed by John Meyer and his colleagues. 7 Institutions of nationhood and nationality have to perform in two relative contexts: the domestic/national level and the global/international level. Combining the above discussions, we can obtain a two-by-two table according to types of institutions and levels of analysis respectively. (See Table 1.) With this analytical framework, I argue that the existence of a nation is hinged upon an ensemble of intersecting institutions that can be classified into civic-territorial and ethno-cultural types. Both types of institutions, moreover, have to be articulated on both the domestic and international levels. If either type fails to articulate at either level, the existence of the nation will be jeopardized and will most probably 50

8 Horng-luen Wang Table 1: Civic-Territorial and Ethno-Cultural Institutions of Nationhood on International and National Levels International/ Global level National/ Domestic level Civic-territorial institutions (Political/territorial map) International organizations International law Transnational arbitration system Diplomacy State sovereignty, territoriality, and citizenship Signifying institutions (national title, flag, anthem, etc.) Ethno-cultural institutions (Cultural/cognitive map) International cultural grammar of nationhood* (Löfgren 1989) International epistemic communities* (Haas 1992) National culture Language Cultural patrimonies Nation-view and knowledge systems (History, literature, etc.)** Note: *On the concepts of international cultural grammar of nationhood and international epistemic communities, see further discussions in Wang (2004a). **On the concepts of nation-view and History with a capital H, see Duara (1995). result in an identity crisis. This is precisely the case of Taiwan ever since the 1990s. To be sure, the escalation of nationalist politics can be viewed as a reflection of the growing institutional failure of the ROC nation, which leads, on the one hand, to an identity crises in Taiwan, and on other, to a resentment towards China. Before I set forth my analysis of those institutional failures of the ROC, a brief historical sketch will help to clarify things. Prior to 1889, when Taiwan became a province of the Chinese Empire by the Qing Dynasty, the island of Taiwan, known as Formosa to Westerners, had been partially occupied by the Dutch, Spanish, Americans, and the Japanese, some of whom established administrative offices for shortterm rule. In 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Qing Dynasty and was under Japanese colonization for fifty years. As China was undergoing its modern nation-building process during the Republican period (from 1911 to 1945), Taiwan was becoming Japanized under Japanese colonialism at the same time. 8 After Japan s defeat in the Second World War in 1945, Taiwan was once again turned over to the then Chinese government, namely, the KMT regime. Four years later, the ruling KMT lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist Party and took refuge in Taiwan. Whereas the CCP founded the People s Republic of China and gradually gained international recognition as the representative state of China, the exiled KMT regime, insisting that its 51

9 Macalester International Vol. 18 national title remain the Republic of China, continued to effectively be a state on Taiwan until While both the PRC and the ROC were competing to claim sovereignty over Taiwan by drawing on legacies of Chinese history, a third claim was made by nationalist supporters of the Taiwan Independence Movement, who insisted that Taiwan should become an independent nation-state that would be autonomous from China. The Democratic Progress Party, consisting of TI supporters in the main, was formed in 1986 and became the major opposition party. Against this backdrop, the election of DPP-nominated Chen Shuibian as President of the ROC in 2000 marked a watershed in Taiwan s history. Not only did it end the 55-year rule of the KMT on the island, but it also shifted the nation-building momentum of the ROC. However, as institutional analysis emphasizes the path dependence of historical development, there were enormous institutional legacies from the preceding KMT state that Chen s new government could hardly do without. Suffice it to say that most of the signifying institutions of the ROC the national title, national anthem, and national flag that the proponents of the independence movement had long vowed to overthrow were kept intact after Chen s inauguration. This reveals the analytical power of the institutionalist approach that this study shall demonstrate, as many institutional crises and predicaments that the KMT created still haunt the succeeding DPP government. The central argument of this essay holds that the recent identity crisis in Taiwan has deep historical roots in ROC s institutions. One cannot comprehend the situation after 2000 if one does not fully understand how the ROC institutions came into existence in the first place. The main body of the analysis, therefore, will focus on the situation before 2000, in which most references to the ROC government refer to the KMT state. The situation under the DPP rule, after 2000, will be discussed subsequently, and I shall show how ROC institutions have both enabled and constrained DPP s pursuit of an independent nationhood. Due to space limitations and for the sake of clarity, the following analysis will focus mainly on civic-territorial types of institutions. The far more complicated situations concerning ethno-cultural institutions should be dealt with separately. 9 IV. Institutional Failures of the ROC Nation and their Effects The current institutional shell under which Taiwan has been conceived of as a nation-state is that of the Republic of China built by the KMT 52

10 Horng-luen Wang after Indeed, the KMT invested enormous efforts in building the ROC nation on Taiwan for various reasons. One of the major reasons was to legitimate its rule over the island by claiming that Taiwan was part of China and that the KMT was the only legitimate government of China. The other reason was to clean up the existing colonial legacies that Japan had left in Taiwan. Ironically, while the KMT was quite successful in turning the Taiwanese people into Chinese by implementing these institutions, it unwittingly built a quasi-nation that was not originally intended. The pro-independence DPP took full advantage of this institutional shell to claim that Taiwan was already an independent nation-state when it came to power. More precisely, institutions of the ROC nation worked quite well on the domestic/national level (Table 1), but failed to function on the global/international level. These failures will be examined in three institutional sites: diplomacy, international organizations, and signifying institutions like national titles and the national flag. A. The Tug of Diplomatic War: Organized Hypocrisy and ROC s Struggles for Sovereignty One of the major tasks assumed by nationalism is to build (or maintain) a sovereign state, whereas state sovereignty, as Stephen Krasner has bluntly put it, is nothing more than organized hypocrisy. 10 According to the logic of organized hypocrisy, sovereignty and territoriality are, to a large extent, dependent upon the approval by others, regardless of the de facto ruling capacity and jurisdiction of a regime. This is particularly relevant in the case of Taiwan. After its retreat to Taiwan, the KMT state still insisted that it was the only legitimate government of China, despite the fact that it had lost over 99% of its territory, including the capital Nanking (now Nanjing). Nonetheless, the backing of the United States ensured and perpetuated the persistence of such a fictitious claim of legitimacy. The majority of other states initially supported the ROC and accordingly refused to recognize the PRC. Although the 1950s and the 1960s saw a growing number of countries switching their recognition to PRC, the ROC was still able to maintain a greater number of diplomatic ties than the PRC (see Table 2). As the Cold War strategy by the West was to keep Communist China alienated from the world, the KMT state, maintaining the fiction of being the sole and legitimate government of the whole of China, still kept its seat as the representative of China in the U.N. The turning 53

11 Macalester International Vol. 18 point came in October 1971, when the General Assembly of the U.N. adopted Resolution 2758 recognizing the People s Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative government of China and moved to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it. 11 In fact, Taiwan was given a chance to remain in the U.N. in 1971, but its then-president, Chiang Kai-shek, refused to give serious consideration to that proposal, adhering to a belief in the nationalist doctrine that there could not be two Chinas. 12 No matter how contingent this decision might have been, it determined the institutional setup that was to decisively shape the development of Taiwan s nationalist politics in the later years. As Anthony Giddens puts it, [n]ation-states only exist in systemic relations with other nation-states. 13 Diplomatic relations, therefore, are one of the crucial manifestations of a state s sovereignty. Conversely, the lack of diplomatic relations implies the absence of state sovereignty and the non-existence of the nation. This is where organized hypocrisy assumes center stage. To compete for the claim of being the only legitimate state of the Chinese nation, the ROC and the PRC have been waging diplomatic wars a zero-sum game by extinguishing each other s diplomatic ties. Since the ROC and the PRC did not recognize each other, they did not allow double recognition either. When a third-party country established diplomatic ties with one side, the other side would sever formal relations with that country. Although in recent years the ROC has tried to loosen up this policy to compensate for its ever-deteriorating diplomatic situation, the PRC is holding more tightly to this zero-sum standpoint. Table 2 illustrates the tug-of-war between the two Chinas. Before 1971, the ROC was able to outnumber and out-maneuver its archrival in diplomatic ties. However, ever since 1971, this situation has reversed. The ROC s number of diplomatic ties dropped drastically after its expulsion from the U.N., while the 1980s witnessed the worst years of the ROC s diplomatic situation: the number of diplomatic ties dropped to 22, which accounted for merely 13% of the total countries in the world. With the efforts of pragmatic diplomacy in the late 1980s, the situation improved somewhat, but only by a slight margin. The situation became worse after DPP s rule in As pointed out, the DPP has conveniently inherited the ROC s institutional shell to adduce the 54

12 Horng-luen Wang Table 2: Countries with Diplomatic Ties to the ROC and the PRC, Selected Years* ROC s PRC s Total of diplomatic diplomatic Year Countries ties Percentage ties Percentage % 85 58% % 89 60% % 97 65% % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % Source: Wei 1991: 2; Gao 1994: 58-9; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People s Republic of China; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Note: *The numbers indicate the total of diplomatic ties at the end of each year. 55

13 Macalester International Vol. 18 claim that Taiwan is already an independent country. Actualizing such a claim, however, requires comprehensive diplomatic recognition. In response, the PRC has become ever more dogmatic on its One China policy and has taken harsher measures to oust Taiwan from the international arena. This leads us to another battleground, namely, international organizations. B. Participation in International Organizations Another institutional site in which state sovereignty is embodied is that of international organizations. 14 Indeed, the proliferation of international organizations should not be seen as the growing transcendence of the nation-state; on the contrary, it is one in which the universal scope of the nation-state has been established, and in which nation-statehood has been constructed. 15 Because the United Nations is the major institution of international society, expulsion from the U.N. thereby disqualified the ROC s membership in all U.N.-related organs and most intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Table 3 shows the declining memberships of the ROC in IGOs as compared with other divided nations, such as Korea and formerly Germany. 16 As we can see, Taiwan s membership in IGOs dropped drastically between 1966 and 1997, in sharp contrast to the PRC s rapid rise since the 70s. The late 80s witnessed Taiwan s worst years of international Table 3: IGO Membership Figures for Taiwan (ROC), PRC, and Other Divided Nations Year Country Taiwan (ROC) PRC Korea, South Korea, North Germany, West Germany, East Hong Kong Source: Union of International Associations (1997/98), Appendix 3 Table 3; Union of International Association (2004/05), Appendix 3 Table 2; Weng (1990: 30), Table 1. Note: 1 East and West Germanys were unified in Hong Kong was formerly a British colony before 1 July 1997, and is now a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. 56

14 Horng-luen Wang connection, with its membership in IGOs plunging into single digit figures. That was not the case for the other divided nations. Even North Korea, which has been known for its longtime international isolation, is in a better position than Taiwan. At the bottom of the table, Hong Kong is added as another case in point. A British colony in 1988 and a Special Administrative Region of the PRC in 1997, Hong Kong enjoyed better international connections than Taiwan, even though it did not have nation-state status. If we turn to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the story is different and more complicated (see Table 4). Although the PRC has deliberately obstructed Taiwan s membership in international organizations, it is simply impossible to bar Taiwan s entry into all NGOs, since there are too many of them (well over 20,000). This is considered advantageous by the ROC government and a chance to compensate for its losses on the diplomatic battlefield. Therefore, the state has deliberately (and desperately) promoted participation in all kinds of NGOs in order to symbolically claim sovereignty. In the 1970s, despite the fact that the PRC was able to reverse international diplomacy in favor of itself, China still remained quite isolated from international communities (with only 71 NGO memberships), while Taiwan was relatively more active in NGOs than its rival. Although the PRC s membership in the NGOs climbed in the 1980s and eventually exceeded that of the ROC in the 1990s, the ROC remained in better shape in the NGOs than it did in the IGOs, since its membership did not fall too far behind the PRC and that of other divided nations. Table 4: NGO Membership Figures for Taiwan (ROC), PRC, and Other Divided Nations Year Country Taiwan (ROC) PRC Korea, South Korea, North Germany, West Germany, East Hong Kong Source: Same as Table 3. Note: Same as Table 3. 57

15 Macalester International Vol. 18 Two factors account for the exacerbation of the institutional crises experienced by the ROC nation in the recent decades. The first concerns the rising role of the PRC. As shown in Table 4, PRC s memberships in NGOs doubled from 1988 to 1997, and then tripled from 1997 to This clearly indicates that China has become a much more active participant in international communities and is much more open to outsiders. The impacts on Taiwan are twofold: On the one hand, PRC s participation in either IGOs or NGOs often demanded the exclusion of Taiwan, or the downgrading of Taiwan s membership. As a consequence, the condition for Taiwan s participation in international communities, either in state or non-state terms, is becoming increasingly difficult. On the other hand, the PRC s rising role in international society has significantly changed outsiders perceptions of China and the Chinese. These impacts, profound and widespread in not only political but also cultural, social, and economic realms, shall be discussed in a later section. The second factor for the ROC s worsening institutional crises lies in the discrepancy between the state and society in terms of their interaction with international communities. Combining Tables 3 and 4, we find that, on the one hand, the state experiences increasing constraints as its membership in IGOs significantly lags behind most other states, whereas, on the other hand, Taiwan s civil society has significantly increased its interaction with international communities. As the interaction between Taiwan and the global community accelerates, there emerges coterminously a rising awareness of the awkward situation of Taiwan in the international setting. There also emerges a rising collective anxiety within Taiwanese society concerning the country s membership/status in those international organizations, such as the United Nations, GATT/WTO, and the Olympics, among numerous others. Here we encounter a critical issue of Taiwan s national identity; namely, the signifying institutions, which include the naming system and representational symbols of the collectivity. C. What s in a Name? : The ROC and Its Misnomers In his theoretical elaboration on language and symbolic power, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has made a point so illuminating to the case of Taiwan that it is worth quoting in extenso: 58

16 Horng-luen Wang The social sciences deal with pre-named, pre-classified realities which bear proper nouns and common nouns, titles, signs and acronyms. At the risk of unwittingly assuming responsibility for the acts of constitution of whose logic and necessity they are unaware, the social sciences must take as their object of study the social operations of naming and the rites of institution through which they are accomplished. But on a deeper level, they must examine the part played by words in the construction of social reality and the contribution which the struggle over classifications, a dimension of all class struggles, makes to the constitution of classed classes defined in terms of age, set, or social position, but also clans, tribes, ethnic groups or nations. 17 Few, if any, countries suffer from naming as much as Taiwan does. The politics of naming, characterized by Bourdieu as rites of institution, has been playing a central part in nationalist politics, as the withdrawal of recognition of the ROC government has had a direct and profound impact on the naming system of Taiwan. Under pressure from the PRC, the national title Republic of China, which implies two Chinas, is no longer acceptable in most formal international settings. Unlike the case of other divided nations such as Korea and former Germany, U.N. Resolution 2758 has made it an institutional script that there is only one China. This institutional script is very important in understanding Taiwan s national predicament. People know that there are two Koreas and that there used to be two Germanys. However, to speak of two Chinas nowadays appears as nonsensical as two Americas. On the other hand, the simple and straightforward term Taiwan was simultaneously unacceptable to the PRC nor desirable to the ROC under the rule of the KMT before The use of Taiwan in the official title implies that Taiwan is an independent nation-state, which neither the PRC nor the KMT state of the ROC before 2000 (both of whom insisted that Taiwan is part of China) would be pleased to see. As a result, how to name the political community formed on this island has become a thorny problem. Even abroad there are so many struggles to find a proper title for this community. They are best reflected in the variety of alternative official names used in the ROC s overseas representative institutions (including both official and quasi or semi-official liaison offices, shown in Table 5). It is apparent from Table 5 that, for 1972, only 33% of overseas representative institutions used the formal national title of the ROC, while the majority used simply Taiwan. However, the situation significantly 59

17 Macalester International Vol. 18 Table 5. Official Titles Used in Taiwan s Overseas Representative Institutions* Year Titles Republic of China 33% 11% 17% 22% Taiwan 44% 11% 4% 2% Chinese 11% 11% 2% Taipei 3% 67% 68% Far East/Oriente 1 11% 49% 4% ROC (Taiwan) 2 6% 5% Others 3 14% 2% Source: Compiled from Gao 1994: 124; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Note: *Including embassies, consulates, and other quasi-official liaison offices in countries with no diplomatic ties with Taiwan. 1 E.g., Far East Trade Service Inc. Lebanon Office; Centro Comercial Del Lejano Oriente, Lima, Republic del Peru. 2 This formula uses the national title ROC followed by Taiwan in the parentheses in order not to be mistaken for China, the PRC. changed in the 80s. In 1982, 49% of overseas foreign institutions that represented the ROC used the rather ambiguous and misleading term Far East (Oriente) as their official designated title. Fourteen percent of these institutions, mostly in European countries such as Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, and Holland, used even more confusing terms such as Sun Yat-sen Center, as their official designated title. The combination of these two categories (63% in total) accounted for more than half of Taiwan s representative institutions in foreign countries whose official designated titles carried neither the ROC s national title, nor the geographical name of Taiwan, nor an ethno-cultural description of the ROC s Chinese identity. Beginning with the government s efforts at pragmatic diplomacy in the late 80s, the situation has undergone significant alteration again. But there is only marginal improvement in this new naming strategy due in no small measure to the PRC s increasing pressure on other countries. The use of the national title ROC increased marginally from 11% to 17%, but the more commonly known Taiwan dropped from 11% to a mere 4%. On the other hand, the misleading names such as Far East drastically dropped to 4%, while the most commonly used title (at 67%) is Taipei, the putative capital city of Taiwan. 18 This formula appears to be acceptable to both the PRC and the ROC. From the PRC s point of view, Taipei defines only a local government, just as Hong Kong once did. Conversely 60

18 Horng-luen Wang on the ROC s side, Taipei is interpreted as a political authority parallel to that of Beijing or Washington, as is often used in Western media. The problem of naming has also afflicted Taiwan s membership in international organizations. Among many others, four formulae stand out as the most noteworthy. On the IGO side, Taiwan appears as Taipei, China in the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and as Taiwan, China in the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). 19 On the NGO side, Taiwan appears as Chinese Taipei in the International Olympic Committee and as Academy of Science located in Taipei, China in the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). 20 In addition, an even more unusual title of Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu was used when the ROC government applied for membership in the GATT/WTO. While the variety of these names appears confusing to outsiders, it is also admitted that, if the name of our overseas representing institutions is too wide of the mark, it will not only derogate our nationhood, but also strike the self-esteems of our nationals. 21 One can imagine how confusing it is to a foreigner who needs to go to a Far East Trade Service Inc. or a Sun Yat-sen Center in order to apply for a travel visa or other official document of Taiwan. For those who are from Taiwan, it is frustrating and sometimes humiliating to see that the name of their homeland appears under various guises. Even an ROC minister at the Sun Yat-sen Cultural Center in Belgium could not refrain from complaining: Cultural Center? Who the hell knows what it is! 22 For those nationalist supporters of Taiwan Independence, it has become common practice to ridicule the ROC s ever-changing names of its overseas institutions by characterizing the ROC as the Republic of Cheating 23 or as the Republic of Confusion. 24 Moreover, in addition to the national title, all signifying institutions pertaining to the ROC from its national flag and national anthem to its passport and official documents are not supposed to be accepted in international arenas. The importance of these institutions is, again, underscored in Bourdieu s insightful argument: The act of institution is thus an act of communication, but of a particular kind: it signifies to someone what his identity is, but in a way that both expresses it to him and imposes it on him by expressing it in front of everyone and thus informing him in an authoritative manner of what he is and what he must be

19 Macalester International Vol. 18 In other words, identity is about both self-recognition and recognition by others. 26 Thus, the failure of the ROC s institutions has led to an identity crisis of its nationals in that, in front of others, there is no institutional way for them to signify who they are in a definite, authoritative manner. To be sure, the signifying institutions of the ROC have only domestic, without international, credibility. This awkward situation in part accounts for the identity crisis in Taiwan. For instance, at the 1996 Olympic Games held in Atlanta, a Taiwanese overseas student was arrested by the U.S. police for waving the unrecognized national flag of the ROC. The arrest, made at the request of a PRC official, was based on the regulations of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). According to the IOC s regulations, it is prescribed that the national flag of Taiwan (whose membership appears as Chinese Taipei rather than the ROC ) should not appear throughout the Olympic Games, nor at any official occasion. 27 This incident involving an individual was considered an insult to the entire Taiwanese society, since it once again reminded the public of the humiliating fact that the collective representations of their community (national title, flag, anthem) were not allowed to appear in the Olympic Games or most other international occasions. There was significant news coverage of this incident in the mass media, people anxiously discussed national dignity in the public sphere, and TI nationalists took this opportunity to ridicule the unrecognized ROC nation and advocated turning it into the Republic of Taiwan. 28 The true irony of it all was in 2000 when the pro-ti DPP became the ruling party. Instead of a name change into Republic of Taiwan, the national title remained the Republic of China. It is apparent the insufficiency of the ethnic explanation of Taiwan s national question and the strength of institutional analysis. As Chen Shui-bian was elected the President of the ROC through a democratic election, his legitimacy stemmed from the institutions of the ROC. If he overthrows ROC s institutions, he runs the risk of losing his legitimacy of rule. More importantly, if Chen ruthlessly changes the national title to the Republic of Taiwan, it would have been viewed as a serious and provocative act of declaring independence. Neither the PRC nor the U.S. would allow this to happen. This involves the triad dynamics between U.S.-Taiwan-China, which lies beyond the scope of this essay; however, the organized hypocrisy it entails has had a profound impact that is worth further consideration. 62

20 Horng-luen Wang V. The Trickle-Down Effects of Organized Hypocrisy: Identity Crises and Resentment The failures and crises of the ROC nation have caused increasing difficulties to the Taiwanese people during the globalization process in the past decade or so. Globalization increases the scope for people to interact with the outside world through cross-border and trans-boundary activities, but the Taiwanese people are doing so only to find that their own country s institutions do not really work. This can be understood in light of what can be called the trickle-down effects of organized hypocrisy, which is illustrated in Figure 1. In the previous section, I have drawn on Stephen Krasner s argument that the aim of civic-territorial institutions is to pursue state sovereignty, which is nothing more than organized hypocrisy. Figure 1 illustrates an ideal situation in which two states (state A and state B) grant each other sovereignty through organized hypocrisy on the level of high politics. Through the mediation of institutional effects, Figure 1: The Trickle-Down Effects of Organized Hypocrisy 63

21 Macalester International Vol. 18 the impact of organized hypocrisy may trickle down to the level of low or non-politics, which consists of fields and spheres that have been characterized as private sectors, civil society, or life worlds in different theoretical perspectives. If we use the term politics in its narrowest sense by confining it to practices and activities directly pertaining to the state (as in high politics ), then most affairs on this level are ordinarily considered as being of a low- or non-political nature. It is on this lower level that the non-state sectors of world society or global (civil) society are conceived, while world culture takes shape. On the other hand, there are feedbacks moving from the lower to the higher levels, which provide the existing state with legitimacy, support, pressures, rebellions, and more. Figure 1 shows only a simplified model between two states, but this would hold good and can be generalized to a multi-state system as well. Since the institutional effects of the state have been resilient and durable, and since recent globalization entails increasing interactions and interconnectedness not only on the high-politics, but also on the low- or non-politics level, Figure 1 suggests that organized hypocrisy is seen not only in state sovereignty, but also in daily life that is ostensibly of a nonpolitical or apolitical nature. Indeed, globalization may have undermined the foundations of the nation-state and/or state sovereignty in a variety of ways, but it may also have strengthened organized hypocrisy by reinforcing the institutional prerogatives of the existing nation-state. This explains why Taiwan s nationalist politics escalates rather than declines during the course of democratization and globalization. I shall analyze two aspects of this: identity crisis and resentment. A. Struggles over Nomenclature and the Politics of Identity The notion of identity implies something to be identified with. This something, however, requires a name or a signifier to exist in the first place. The construction of social reality postulates the institution of nomenclature, which, in turn, is constitutive of individuals. 29 Without a name, the identity of actors cannot possibly be evoked. In this light, at the core of Taiwan s identity crisis we find the problem of naming: there is no way of naming these people and their collectivity. Insofar as nationality and citizenship are concerned, the terms China and Chinese have been preempted by the PRC. When the two terms are used, they are meant to refer to the PRC, not the ROC. This is further 64

22 Horng-luen Wang complicated by the problematic terms Taiwan and Taiwanese as used to refer to nation and nationality. Many outsiders have been perplexed by the following question: If the name Republic of China has brought Taiwan infinite problems, why can t it just be replaced it with a new one such as the Republic of Taiwan, or simply Taiwan? That would solve its problems all at once. But indeed, there are profound complexities that attend the adoption of these solutions. By the 1990s, the KMT state of Taiwan had maintained that Taiwan was not a country, but the ROC was. Although this rhetoric has gradually eroded since Lee Teng-hui assumed power, such a doctrine has left strong institutional legacies that even the successor Chen Shui-bian, who used to maintain that all symbolic institutions of the ROC should be overthrown, cannot do without. Furthermore, the state of the PRC, for deep nationalistic reasons, does not allow Taiwan for a country name either. Since the PRC also claims its sovereignty over Taiwan by seeing it as part of Chinese territory, to turn Taiwan into a country name would in effect disqualify its claim over the island. The PRC s position is backed by its military forces, as it repetitively threatens to attack Taiwan should the latter declare independence. As a consequence, there is no way to name the political community of Taiwan insofar as nation and nationality are concerned. Neither Taiwan/Taiwanese nor China/Chinese can serve the function of signifying the political community on this island. The identity crisis is to a large extent related to the problem of naming, but it cannot be easily solved by simply changing the name, since the change of name itself is under severe constraints resulting from organized hypocrisy. Commenting on such a predicament, a journalist lamented: It is becoming increasingly difficult for our officials to refer to our own country. Our national title is surely ROC, but to speak of the Republic of China to foreigners, nine out of ten times it will be mistaken for the PRC across the strait. To speak of the ROC on Taiwan, it sounds awkward and the listeners can make neither head nor tail of what it means. But to speak of Taiwan, we will be accused [by the PRC] of advocating Taiwan Independence. Thus, under the close examinations of the PRC, the unificationists, and the TI supporters, to refer to our country without making mistakes is like walking on a high wire; a slight slip of the tongue will cause troubles. Taiwan s current predicament lies exactly in not knowing how to be ourselves

23 Macalester International Vol. 18 Thus, we can argue that the primary problem is not so much about identity itself as about the problem of naming and the signifying institutions. Institutions signify the existence of a collectivity such as a nation; conversely, the malfunction or dysfunction of these signifying institutions jeopardizes the existence of such a collectivity. Only through this perspective can we understand why, whenever it comes to the thorny problem of the national question, there has been a rising anxiety that Taiwan will gradually disappear from the world map, since there is no institutional way through which it can signify its existence. The non-existence of the society in the institutional settings is accompanied by the sentiment of being an international orphan in the global village. In such circumstances, a deep resentment eventually arises. B. Resentment and Chain Reaction The longtime isolation of Taiwan (as a collectivity) from international society has brought about profound psychological effects to the collective mentality in Taiwanese society that can be characterized as resentment. I use this term to follow a Nietzschean-Schelerian tradition of analysis. As is widely known, Friedrich Nietzsche first introduced the concept of resentment to the world of modern thought, but it was another seminal German thinker, Max Scheler, who equipped the concept with full analytical power in his highly acclaimed but much neglected monograph Ressentiment. 31 In his analysis, resentment, a characteristic of the rising bourgeoisie, is the most powerful and influential psychological locomotive in modern society. There are two sociological conditions that jointly lead to the rise of resentment: one is theoretical comparability and the other is the discrepancy between theoretical (expected) and factual (actualized) status. The impact of resentment, profound and long lasting, eventually leads to what Scheler called value-shifts or transvaluations in the modern world. In this sense, nationalism can be seen as a manifestation of transvaluations resulting from resentment, as Liah Greenfeld 32 has convincingly demonstrated in her comparative study of nationalism in five countries. As I have pointed out elsewhere, current nationalist politics in Taiwan have been characterized by undisguised ressentiment ressentiment towards each other and towards the outside world. 33 The two sociological preconditions of ressentiment are particularly relevant to 66